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Purpose: COVID-19 pandemic is among the most important events of the 21st Century. Its global character and the multi-dimensional fallouts it has on communities worldwide further increase the importance of the pandemic. During the period of more than one year since the declaration of the pandemic, the communities failed to provide a lasting solution other than the face masks, social distance, and hygiene. Failure to fight the pandemic with considerable success subsequently raised the topic of revising the policymakers’ previous predictions at the start of the pandemic based on incomplete information. So, the calendar put forward for the pandemic went forward day by day, and the authorities who failed to adopt a prudent approach were obliged to pay increasingly higher costs for their mistakes. In the chapter, the financial and economic effects of the pandemic in selected countries are examined. While examining the policies followed in these countries, in terms of fiscal stimulus packages and monetary expansion packages, it is aimed to shed light on the pandemic experience in the Turkish economy and to develop policy recommendations. Thus the persistence of the pandemic pushes all countries to update their current policies and seek new methods. This chapter aims to examine developed and emerging economies in the covid-19 era that have implemented policies to struggle with the pandemic and whose policy framework can be accessed.

Methodology: To do this we carried out a literature review of the Economic and Fiscal Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic during 2020 and early 2021.

Findings: Countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany are believed to have taken strong measures to minimize the damages on the economy due to the pandemic, while other countries like Russia, India, and Brazil are deemed to have mounded new policies within the framework of their internal dynamics. One should also note that, in addition to the individual efforts of each European country, the European Union has also played a decisive role in the policies of its member states for crisis management institutionally.

Political science and public administration have seen significant transformations as a result of digitalization. The literature depicts the transformation brought about by digitalization at various stages. In the literature, these periods are termed as Public Administration 1.0 (Cameralism), Public Administration 2.0 (Weberian Bureaucracy), Public Administration 3.0 (New Public Administration), Public Administration 4.0 (Digital Public Administration) and Public Administration 5.0 (Super Smart Society). Not only has digitalization contributed to a more effective, efficient and accountable service understanding, but it has also contributed to the dissolution of the rigid understanding between voters and politicians. However, digitalization has brought both problems and benefits to the field. By creating a fast world, unconfirmed information reaches a greater number of people, bringing negative situations with it. Aside from the societal benefits of digitalization, the methods to be considered will also be discussed in this study.

Departing from Turkish national debates around Islam, national belonging, and homosexuality during 2008–2011, this paper shows how “LGBT rights” discourses ultimately worked to position Muslim headscarf activists as against LGBT activists by rendering complex positions that do not follow easy “for vs. against” LGBT rights political formulas as “homophobic.” In return, this foreclosed potential solidarities differently injured citizens could have formed against increasing neoliberal state violence. I show that the multitude of Muslim women’s positions on the issue of LGBT rights complicates easy religious/secular binaries and illuminates how it is not only human rights discourses but also their “Western” critiques that travel transnationally. This story also contributes to current debates on postsecularism by illustrating how the same national context can house both liberal rights frameworks that can be used against pious Muslim subjects, and a monopolization of a definition of Islam for state power. Finally, I offer “politics of cruelty” and “right to sin” as alternative frameworks for imagining social justice outside of liberal rights-based politics.

This chapter presents findings of an ongoing project on the social construction of ethnic identity among young Kurdish immigrants living in Turkey. The chapter begins with information on Kurdish culture. The second part overviews the difficult relations between the Turkish state and Kurds since establishment of the Republic in 1923. The third section describes the education system in the country and in Istanbul specifically. Historical ties between the Istanbul and Kurdish culture are also mentioned. The chapter closes with research that focuses on problems of Kurdish educational experiences in Turkey and preservation of their cultural identity in Istanbul. The study shows that on the one hand public education is perceived by the Kurds in Turkey as a discriminatory entity but on the other hand nonpublic educational opportunities in Istanbul help Kurdish migrants preserve and practice their cultural identity.